give me out or give me in

N had a way of saying that she’d just been to Gaza that made people turn around to have a good look at her. These three men were no different.

“You mean recently?”

“Like, last week.”

This was the first (semi-)complete sentence either of us had spoken since we had left al-Khalil (Hebron) for Ramallah. The trip, already (20 watchtowers) long owing to the prohibitive security fence, was made even longer when ‘i’shat al-dinamo (whatever that is) broke and the taxi became inoperable.

Upon hearing of the taxi troubles, the two young male passengers immediately concluded that they weren’t in a particular rush and that, should a cab with open slots pass us by on our road in the middle of nowhere, we girls should get priority. Of course, of the few cabs that passed us by, none stopped, for none had spaces. (To make the trip worthwhile, cabs fill up to capacity before they hit the long and winding road.)

Our young taxi driver with the crew cut apologized to us all as he inched towards the nearest town. There, after several stops, he bought a new ‘ishat dinamo and, at a different mechanic’s, had it installed.

The three men made serious faces at the open hood as N and I waited in the cranked-up car (again, not sure why; the tires seemed fine). Anyway, as N and I sat there twiddling our thumbs, the driver popped into his seat and threw us a chocolate-wafer bar and an embarrassed apology. Before we could thank him (or throw it back?) he was outside.

Though we weren’t hungry and though all we wanted to do was to laugh amusedly at his gruff generosity, we split the apology bar in two and ate it. These Palestinian men were already self-conscious, and the last thing we wanted was to make them think us too good for those famous Ali Baba wafers.

Once the new ‘i’shat dinamo was up and running, our driver made a quick stop at a tiny market. He returned with plastic cups, a liter of tangy orange juice and — guess what? — more chocolate wafers. We drank the apology juice but declined the apology bars. We had had enough apologies to keep us running for hours.

We were back on our mountainous way when the topic of Gaza emerged.

“How is it there?” The taxi driver with the crew cut asked.

“The destruction is awful, but the people are so resilient.”

“How is Hamas’ governance — as opposed to Fatah’s, here?” This from the man respectfully crowded into a corner of the cab, the one with a beige jacket, red-and-white stripe collared shirt and faded jeans. He had been lowering his gaze the whole time, but now his curiosity overpowered him.

“There’s corruption there, too. Hamas and Fatah — they’re the same. Both corrupt.”

A hush fell over our crowd of four. Everyone was processing. I was wondering how, in 48-hours’ time N had managed to discover that Hamas was as corrupt as Fatah.

“What did you see? I mean, how did you find that out? Like, what indicators–”

They all looked at me, astonished. “So you weren’t there, too?”

I shook my head. We all turned to N, expecting.

Suddenly, she was a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “It’s just that conversation that day with that man–”

“You mean Kareem Muhammad Ali?” He was the socialist Palestinian politician we’d lunched with the other day, among others. He had argued that Hamas was not entirely altruistic in its transfer of goods from Egypt to Gaza through the tunnels, that it stood to profit from the transaction. He did not, however, say anything about how those profits were disbursed, nor did he question the general integrity of Hamas’ operatives.

N withdrew. The language barrier, for once, had stood higher than this land’s physical barriers. She had misunderstood, but she rebounded quickly.

“If you had your choice of Israel, Hamas or Fatah governance, which would you choose?” N asked with characteristic charisma. Over the course of our trip, I learned that the very simplicity of her questions elicited surprisingly complicated responses.

“I’d live in Israel,” the taxi driver said in a heartbeat. “Without a doubt Israel.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s unlivable, here. We can’t get jobs here zay al-nas (literally: like the people). In Israel, the wages are so much better. Here, every city has its own government. In Hebron seat belts are optional. In Ramallah, they’re required. On Israeli roads, you’re fined to death if you litter. On Palestinian roads, no problem, litter all you want. Here, it costs so much just to pay for a taxi license, then for a license plate. It’s impossible. But, to be honest, I’m not here long. My papers are done. I’m just waiting for permission to move to Jordan. I’m done with this.”

“Being under Fatah is awful, worse than Israel even.” The words of the man in the red-and-white collared shirt. “For years, my dad was a fugitive, wanted by Israel — that is before he was killed. Whenever the Israelis come to get someone, they send word right before, so at least the ladies can cover and the family can be ready. I was detained five times: three times by Fatah and twice by Israel.”

This person spoke of prison as casually as if it were an ice cream parlor.

“When Fatah comes,” he continued, his gaze fixed outside, “they don’t respect anything or anyone. And then they beat and torture. Worse than Israel. It’s like a personal thing for them.”

“Why — Why were you imprisoned?” N asked the burning question.

“For talking — about Hamas. I’m Hamas. Anyone who talks about Hamas here is imprisoned. Most of Hamas’ support comes from here, from al-Khalil, but you wouldn’t know it. Anyone who opens his mouth with a word is taken in. It wasn’t Gaza that elected Hamas. The West Bank was the one that gave Hamas its vote, but Israel wouldn’t have it, and Fatah came in on Israel’s auspices. People don’t love Fatah here. In an election, they wouldn’t win, not in a hundred years. I’d live under Hamas today if I could.”

He paused as if turning something in his mind.

“If the bombs were falling on Gaza like last summer, I’d still want to be in Gaza. I’m willing to die to be under Hamas.” He knocked his knuckles against the window. “Thanks, man. I get down here.”

He made the forbidden remark without heroism or theatrics. For prison-worthy words, they were unabashed, stubborn– one might even say — enthusiastic.

go down, moses

The Grinch who stole my Christmas at the border crossing was the only one I met over the course of my four-day stay in the Israel-occupied West Bank.

The rest of the armed soldiers were amiable direction-givers. They were alternately bashful or jocular about their faulty English. When we opined about the dangerous contents of our bags or their military presence at every juncture, they seemed to appreciate sarcasm.

If the male soldiers expressed a sort of faint interest in us, the female soldiers did the same for the Arab men — only what men got was expressly negative attention.

On the cobblestone roads of Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers — often young and female — regularly stopped Arab passersby — always male, often old — and demanded Israeli-issued Jerusalem IDs. If the men were, like N, infiltrators, they were in trouble.

We knew we were flying under the radar. We were girls who, in the eyes of the occupation, could do no harm.

And, once, we lied.

We were going to leave Jerusalem that day and N knew she might never be permitted reentry. We wanted to see Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock one more time.

It was dawn, and there we were, backpacks, cameras and all. Three soldiers idly shifted their feet while two sat at a foldable table outside the main gate. An Arab Israeli was among them. They all turned to us, curious and a little relieved, as if we were among the highlights of a monotonous morning shift.

In Arabic, they asked us where we were from. In English, we told them the US. They nudged forward the best English speaker among them, then interestedly watched our exchange. We played up our effusive touristy apolitical American personas. Did we have our passports? We had anticipated this question. I pulled out my passport, which was kosher. N regretted that hers was at the hotel where we’d stayed — a manifold lie. They let the passport glide without so much as a glance. The Israeli soldiers seemed eager to chat and the Arab in uniform made conversational advances, so we made a quick but courteous retreat, and the name of the Noble Sanctuary acquired a new shade of meaning.

We had been carried through that security point on the wings of Americanhood and girl-privilege. We had avoided another potentially perilous fall (from Israel’s good graces).

And that is just the problem.

We were lucky it was morning. We were lucky they were bored. We were lucky we were young women. We were lucky in so many ways, but the implementation of justice shouldn’t depend on time of day.

The soldiers I met were mostly friendly and, I know, it serves Israel’s public relations and internal safety to have it so. But then again, I hadn’t raised a voice, let alone a fist against Israeli hegemony. I was there quiet and meek as a sheep, and they were happy to herd me along.

At the King Hussein / Allenby Border Crossing, on my way back from the Occupied West Bank, there was a young Israeli soldier with close-cropped hair checking passports and another Israeli soldier framed in a tinted-window booth. Like a clerk at an In-N-Out window, she smiled out and made funny faces at the children who hopped alongside their parents.

Her black hair was pulled back into a loose pony tail. She leaned forward on her elbows. With her right hand she waved us forward. In her other hand, she held a firearm, almost entirely out of view.

She smiled at me, a smile not unlike the one a slave might have seen from a kind mistress. A smile that, no matter how broad, cannot apologize for a downright racist institution.

That smile would disappear, I knew, if any slave made a quick, menacing movement or if the master sensed the beginnings of a slave revolt. Too swiftly, the gun would emerge, would be aimed, would fire, and no one would have a right to ask why. These would be the natural dealings between master and slave. All in the interest of the plantation and its owners — nay, in the interest of the slaves themselves, for what, pray, would the slaves do without their benevolent masters?

the popeye treatment

We were in front of a wall-sized mural of Yasser Arafat. The canvas was Israel’s security fence.

Where was N? We said we’d meet at this border crossing half-an-hour ago.

“Do you want to cross to the other side?” I asked A. “N and her uncle might see us better from there if they drive by.”

We crossed the street. Now Yasser Arafat was looming over us, and a series of aluminum trash bins formed a pungent barricade in front of the more stately concrete one.

Three apple-cheeked round-faced straight-haired boys formed yet another barrier, this time in front of me. Each had a stack of CDs in hand. A was an ajnabiyah (foreigner), whereas I — I would understand their entreaties.

“Min shan Allah. Min shan Allah. For God’s sake.” They pushed the CDs at me.

Somehow, I ended up with three random CDs: one for Amr Diab, another for Um Kulthoom and the last — catch this — a Fattah Party mix (not to be mistaken for a Fattah party mix). What’s more, I ended up with a loyal following of pre-teen CD sellers.

Some of the boys who’d sold competed as vigorously over my attention as boys who hadn’t. I looked from face to face. Several of these kids were spitting images of each other. There were clearly brothers in the bunch.

“Instead of hustling each other like this, why don’t you guys work together? Now, some of you sold me CDs, right?” They nodded impatiently. “If you took turns, you wouldn’t wear out your buyers and you’d each go home with something.”

My reasoning didn’t buy new clothes or wash off dusty feet. Dissatisfied, a couple of the the boys picked up disintegrating spinach from the garbage heap and flung it into the air. It came fluttering down on A and me like green confetti. A was seriously unimpressed.

We crossed back to the other side. A sat on the foot of a supermarket. I stood in front of her, on the lookout for N and blocking the sun.

We heard a siren. An Israeli police car was wailing near the border. Two teenagers walked past.

“We did it! We broke the glass!” They clapped hands and, on fast feet, were gone.

Two of the apple-cheeked boys who had remorse written all over their faces crossed the street to us.

“You should probably go.” One said without making eye contact. “Someone threw rocks at their cars, and they might shoot. They sometimes shoot. You never know.”

From our place across the street, A and I listened as one vehicle wailed its distress and a hundred others stood mutely in their queues. Yasser Arafat, too, watched. He, too, was ominously silent.

let jerusalem be jerusalem again

Blonde, hazel-eyed A got through fine on her American passport. The slouching IDF soldier in the window yelled at her but let her through all the same.

N was next. N was an American citizen, a Berkeley student, born in Jerusalem. Because of that last fact, she had earned a special oval stamp in her passport that identified her, in Hebrew, as Palestinian and, in English, as unwelcome.

Sure, N could visit Jerusalem, but only after she applied for a permit from the Israeli government — a permit granted under the direst circumstances — childbirth and terminal illness.

We pretended we didn’t know. We hoped that the screaming lady in the window would be blind with self-inflicted fury. Unfortunately, she saw fine.

“Irja’ lalbayt!” She yelled at N in the masculine. “Go home!”

N and I hugged a quick goodbye, then I tried my luck.

The sensor sounded its disapproval.

“Irja‘!” The lady in the window yelled. ”Go back!”

She impatiently waved me forward. Again, it beeped.

“Irja’!” she yelled again. (If she were a decade older, she’d have been Old Yeller.) A young man, also in uniform and with legs raised on a swivel chair, laughed as if he were watching The Daily Show. (In a way, he was.)

“What should I do?” I asked in all-earnest English.

She yelled in a language I didn’t understand — Hebrew? — and waved me away, in the direction of the lined up Palestinians. The young man laughed. I felt my face burn.

A Palestinian woman stuck in the turnstile behind me was my only comfort.

“Are you wearing bracelets? Jewelry?”

I took them off. Two bangles from my Palestinian grandmother. A watch my brother chose for me before I left for Jordan. A ring my mother had given me for my high school graduation and eighteenth birthday. Where did I think I was going, anyway, wearing these things? I dug under my scarf for what were once my grandmother’s earrings. Anything but the beep.

“Leave those. You should be fine,” the woman behind bars spoke, as if from experience.

I went through. Safe.

I pinned my passport photo page up against the window.

“Visa. Visa!” She yelled, and the young man beside her gave her some more positive reinforcement. She must think herself a real entertainer, whipping up laughs like that. She’ll probably try for singing, what with all the vocal training she gets at this border.

I showed her my hexagon-shaped visa stamp. Not Palestinian.

Now, for some unfathomable reason, she was yelling again, in tongues. Now she was waving her arms. Now the young man put his feet down because he was laughing so hard.

“What do you want me to do?” I was shouting, too.

Like a chicken straining to lay her egg, she released several useless screams before her efforts proved finally productive.

“Photo!”

I showed her the photo again, she waved me off like a fly and pressed the buzzer to usher the next insect into her swatting range.

I cried. I cried because I hate hate hate negative attention. I cried because my nightmares involve public humiliation. I cried because I knew that I couldn’t report her to anyone. I cried because I wanted to beat her into silence. I cried because I had come to a place where the human rights of Palestinians are systematically violated and I — I was stupidly, insensibly sensitive. I cried because I had no right to cry.

My self-pity was brief. A and I emerged on the other side of the border, and N’s older cousin — a resident of Jerusalem — met us there.

“They didn’t let N through?”

We shook our heads.

“Follow me.”

We exited the border, left Jerusalem behind us, reunited with N. The three of us hurried behind the man in the black jacket and phone to his ear. Not a minute later, another young man in a huge white t-shirt and baggy jeans  – an LA transplant, it seemed — hurriedly parked his car and climbed into the passenger seat. The cousin took the wheel. Wordlessly, N, A and I rode in the back.

This was the contingency plan. If it didn’t work, there’d be no Jerusalem — at least not for N.

After a half-hour of winding mountainous highways, we were at another checkpoint, this time for cars.

A black IDF soldier tapped the tinted windows. She searched our trunk. Peeking in, she looked at our passports: The two men’s. Mine. A’s. N’s.

She saw only American passports. Human faces. Five casual Arab strangers.

Had she looked closer, though, she’d have noticed that we girls were holding hands. Had she looked closer, she’d have seen that, behind our smiles, we weren’t breathing. Had she looked closer, she’d have discovered that we were smuggling into the city a strictly illegal substance — a Jerusalem-born Palestinian.

a land without a people

Where were they, the Palestinians?

In front of the school, there were no children. In the roads, there were no gel-haired youth. I had read that most women in the Middle East stay indoors for a plethora of reasons, so the absence of women on the street didn’t feel uncanny.

Still, I was wondering, where were they, these people who have famously high birthrates? Have they been so effectively scattered that none have remained?

We had seen red-roofed settlements on our way here. We’d seen Israeli Arabic-Hebrew roadsigns. We’d yielded to let cars of bearded yarmulke-wearing settlers drive past. We’d paused at the wave of an awfully young Israeli soldier at a checkpoint.

Israelis were here. Illegally here, but here all the same.  So where in the world were the Palestinians?

Beit Haneena was our first Arab-majority stop, and it sure made me stop.

The village felt uninhabited, forlorn, eerie. The metal doors on most of the storefronts were jammed shut. It was quiet –uncomfortably so, and so dark at night that there were no shadows.

This village, like countless others, I was told, had become so suffocated that the majority of its population lived elsewhere — in the US and Europe. As many as 90% of Beit Haneena’s residents annually commute from the global village to their little own.

Sure, I was disappointed in Beit Haneena but, in a way,  I was looking for a giant in elf’s shoes.

Beit Haneena is and has long been an agrarian village. Sure, in her blossoming days, she had a bigger wardrobe and more admirers, but notwithstanding her stunted growth, I suspect she fares well next to other crippled villages.

Plus, we had arrived ‘al-asriyah, in the late afternoon, at a time when dinner aromas regularly seduce families indoors. That evening, a score of N’s family and friends were assembled around a tray of ma’loubeh and, the next morning, I was comforted to see schoolchildren snickering and gossiping and running around in starched-and-pressed teal uniforms in the yard.

Still, nothing quieted my worry quite like visiting Ramallah the next day. Yes, I told myself, the Ramallah of Mourid and Mustafa Barghouti. The Ramallah of Al Jazeera. The Ramallah.

In what I perceived to be the city center was a rotunda. High on pedestals, half a dozen lions oversaw the streets radiating out. But, I reflected, if lions are still the noble, dignified creatures they were once reputed to be, they weren’t standing at the rotunda.

The lions were alive, of flesh and blood. When they had stepped off those pedestals, they’d left stone figures in their wake. Among these people wrapped in demure coats, with well-groomed manes were lions with spirits untamed.  Though they’d been caged, forbidden from roaming the pride lands of their fathers, made to jump through flaming hoops and whipped right and left, they remained dignified.

That unwillingness to settle, that sense of our own intrinsic value, that awareness of our humanity — that is what enables us to endure oppressive regimes and, ultimately, to overthrow them.

is real?

“Can we have more coloring activities, like we did last year?” Zade asked me during break. “And can we do more things in Arabic? Not everything has to be in English. It’s too much English. We get tired of English.”

I promised I’d think about it.

Later, I decided that yes, we can have more activities and no, we were not going to do things in Arabic because, face it, this was supposed to be an intensive English class.

For the very next class, I found an activity I could implement without having to buy tons of construction paper or glue. I know it wasn’t what Zade was looking for, but it was a step.

The goal was to write a mock news piece about a disaster that strikes an imaginary place.

I walked my students through the process: ”First, name your fictional location, where the disaster will strike. What is the name of your imaginary city, Samah? Memories City. Nice. And have you decided on a disaster? Rains that inspire forgetfulness? Wonderful! Eyad, what about you? What’s the name of your fictional place?”

“Israel.”

“I said fictional, Eyad. Think of a place that doesn’t exist. Use your imagination.”

He slowly turned the gum in his mouth and looked at me placidly, as if I were without imagination.

trees and phd’s

The college town I come from calls itself the City of Trees and PhD’s. Well here are my top ten observations from another school that has its own generous supply of trees and PhD’s, the one and only University of Jordan.

10. Walking under UJ’s trees feels like a stroll through the set of a Turkish-dubbed-Arabic TV drama. The bottommost yard on these evergreens is painted white. I dismissed it as a traffic precaution (reflecting headlights) or as a quirky aesthetic touch. Wrong, and more wrong. It’s insect repellent.

9. The women far outnumber the men. Of forty-some students in my Sharia class, only two are men. (And that’s double the number of men in one of my upper division Arabic literature courses.) My empirical evidence is incomplete, however, until I step into the engineering lair, where I suspect all the men are hiding.

University statistics confirm that women outnumber men, 6 to 4, among the student population, while 7 out of every 10 professors is male. Maybe the graduation of more young women today will translate into more female professors tomorrow. Maybe not. But that still leaves us wondering: where are the young men at? I’m inclined to think that more young men than women have to drop out of school to support their families. But I could be wrong. They could just be decorating the hallways, smoking cigarettes and petting their heavily gelled hair.

8. In the College of Letters, there’s a handwritten sign on the bulletin board, offering condolences to a student whose father recently passed away. Also, outside, there’s a big banner commemorating the Jordanian military’s martyrs who passed while serving in Haiti. I didn’t even know Jordan was sending troops to Haiti.

Also, in morbid news, class was tearfully interrupted today when a niqab-wearing student requested that another leave the class with her. Their mutual friend had been in a week-long coma after a car accident and had just recently died.

To my surprise, the professor turned it into a teachable moment. She reminded us: Innassabra ‘indassadmatil ‘oola. Patience is at the first strike of calamity — a prophetic saying. She coupled that with a personal story — her brother withheld news of their father’s death a few hours, until after she turned in her Master’s dissertation. That, she said, required patience and restraint.

In a passionate speech, she suggested that we not look to society for our values and expect society to change. We are society. We should consciously choose our values and act upon them. A refreshing variation on the you-are-our-tomorrow speech.

7. When you’re a 5-times-a-day praying Muslim in America, you’re bound to have prayer stories. Like the time you prayed on the concrete in a gas station. Or on the side of the freeway. Or in the middle of the quad in high school. Here, of course, there are a thousand places to pray. They’re not all pretty or pristine. In fact, some are pretty discouraging. But they are everywhere.

Using another human compass — a Jordanian friend M — I also discovered a sisters-only lounge at the University. This has a lunch area, two disjointed prayer halls and a row of lockers smothered in safe political slogans and rainbow-colored stickers. A more austere black-and-white bumper sticker on one of the glass panes reads, “We love you for the sake of Allah.” I love you too, oh windows.

6. A spray-painted Israeli flag lies in lieu of a doormat outside some room in one of the Shariah buildings (there are two). The administration called it vandalism, the students freedom of expression.

Also, as you near the Sharia buildings, you notice that the number of boy-clusters around music-booming portable radios dwindle, while the jilbab- and niqab-clad girls multiply. Politics aside, there’s a sort of serenity about the place.

5. Here’s the breakdown on transportation to UJ from my home:

15 min.            taxi                                   JD 1

1 hour             3 buses + walking        JD 0.75

1 hour             walking                            Free

I’ve tried all three modes and, provided that the weather isn’t out to get me, I’ll probably take the road less traveled by (i.e. the sidewalk.)

4. If you’re into people-watching, be forewarned. There are a lot of people to watch, and a heck of a lot of people watching you. I don’t know if they’re lazing between classes or through classes, but there’s never a short supply of people on the benches lining the intra-college roads. After doing my fair share of walking, here’s a rule I’ve invented: When you see a couple glowing — impeccably dressed, walking together, but really wanting everyone to notice them — well, they’re probably engaged. When they’re crouching on the sidewalk between parked cars, however, they’re probably not.

3. Even though some students do mix and mingle at the U of J, the overwhelming majority do separate like oil and water. This blend of mixing and separating feels like a hybrid of my mosque and school environs in the U.S. While my transition to Jordan was arguably to a more conservative environment, a new friend E — a Palestinian living in Saudi Arabia — said her experience was the reverse. As we walked side-by-side through the campus, I couldn’t help but think that, for opposite reasons, we were each slightly awed by this new land, this middle ground.

2. I plan to perform hajj one day iA. As if it were aware of my intentions, UJ gave me a free preview. I had to jog laps between al-Safa (the College of Letters) and al-Marwa (the College of Foreign Languages) in hot pursuit of an elusive class. (Had I done it a few more times, perhaps Jordan’s water problem would be a thing of the past.) As it turns out, the class had been moved to yet a third building. That third building, of course, is casually referred to as the Old Technology Building, but all official maps deny its existence, as did several young ladies I asked. (Of course, the first young man we asked — one quietly studying from a dictionary-sized book on a staircase — he gave precise directions about not only the building, but also the exact room in question.)

Apparently, the long-sought-after building is known as the Political Science Department. A perfect place for a Contemporary Jordanian and Palestinian Literature class, right? Oh, whatever, I got there eventually, and that’s all that matters. Or is it? When I apologetically walked 20 minutes late into this 45-minute class, I found one of the only male students in the room standing at the podium. He paused in the middle of his report on a Jordanian poet named ‘Arar, and the professor turned to me, sarcastic.

- Are you in this class?

- Yes.

- And where, pray, have you been?

- I was lost.

- For a month? [Class laughs; I redden. Of course, the professor asks this because classes have been in session for a month, but I've been waiting long and hard for the necessary approval. So there.]

- I’m auditing.

- Oh! Then come on in!

That time, she mocked me before the class. Today, she mocked the class before me (and embarrassed me again in the process.) This is how she introduced me to her students, inserting pauses after every question for emphasis: “She’s an Arab American coming here to improve her Arabic. She doesn’t get grades. She doesn’t take tests. She doesn’t have to be here. Did you hear that? She studies because she wants to. Where are you from that? Where?” Hah. I’m sure my popularity skyrocketed after that speech.

1. The first time I entered his class, I almost immediately vetoed it. Gave it a double strike-through. But this was an unprecedented case of professor-redeems-himself-as-class-session-progresses. You can see the trajectory of my thoughts from my notes, which move from annoyed observations to (slightly) more content-based stuff:

“nasal voice, bald, white wreath of hair, charcoal eyebrows, thin gold-frame glasses, sitting and reading from his book, stopped in the middle of class for athan, boys in the front row, girls in next two rows, four rows empty, dust settles on everything not wiped by an arm, back or rear, floor pattern like Legos, went to Oxford (?), afandi was a person in Tripoli, Lebanon, Amina al-Saidiya + husband = democratic conversation.”

I called my mom last night, mentioned to her this class, this professor. She asks, “Does he have a longish nose? A sense of humor? Dr. So and So, yes that’s the one, I think. No, he wasn’t bald — but that was 25 years ago. He might be bald now.” Oh my God, I was hysterical. I knew this professor before I knew him. But then he was an idea, not flesh-and-blood. Can he really be the one who asked after Mama when she missed his class, 25 years ago? All the girls were abuzz about it, then. “You’re a favorite. That professor? Shoot, he doesn’t ask about anybody!”

I think every history makes its case, vies for legitimacy. The jury are always the living, and the evidence is usually extracted from the lifeless — fossils, monuments, manuscripts — things that survive the wear and tear of years better than the human body. But in this case, the human body had survived. To me, the professor was a living monument. A link in a chain that connects two college students — mother and daughter. He is now witness to my life and Mama’s.

I stayed after class today to ask him. He had shut down the student before me so curtly that I did a double-take. Was this the right time to ask? I didn’t want to wait two more days. Before my courage expired, I blurted: “Assalamu alaikum, doctor. Thanks for letting me audit your class! I have a question, if you have a moment?” No reply, so I went right to it. “My mom. She thinks she took a class with you. Years and years ago. Arabic Literature Appreciation?” I told him her full name. He looked like he was searching, searching, searching through yellowed mental files. I could tell he was trying in earnest. “I know, you probably don’t remember.” He asked about the year. A pause. He didn’t remember her, I could tell, but he smiled. “I may well have taught her.” He said it as if it were an important declaration. I beamed. “Thanks.” That was evidence enough for me.

in memoriam: sido, my grandfather

Sido had a fourth grade education but memorized more classical Arabic poetry than I will ever know.

He could tell you bittafseel al mumil (literally: in boring detail, figuratively: at length) what he did on Monday June 29 1942 (if that date is even accurate) but he couldn’t tell you his date of birth. (Like many of his contemporaries, he lost his birth certificate during the exodus).

Sido was Palestinian. He survived the British Mandate, experienced Israeli occupation and was one of the last people out of Yafa (now Jaffa). Despite his nonexistent medical training, he helped the last doctor in treating fidayeen (freedom fighters) at the hospital — men who defended Yafa until the city fell. From the martyrs, he collected identification which he used to send the belongings on their person to their surviving relatives.

I want to tell you a story about Sido. Just one because, if I used the darkness as my ink, night would expire and much would be left unwritten. So one story will suffice here.

It was Palestine. Circa 1972. Israel was working to shift demographics in an occupied Gaza strip. (Demographics here is code for the systematic transfer of land from Arab to Jewish hands, the promotion of Jewish immigration and settlement and the  evacuation of the native Arab population).

My refugee grandparents were notified by the Israeli government that their newly purchased home in Gaza would be lost to them if they could not reside in it. Of course, they could not reside in it because — truth be told — they could not reside anywhere in Palestine. As Palestinian refugees, they had no right of return. Visits to the homeland came with limited time warranties. The Man demanded a permit that only he could give, and he would not give it. Israel was acting the prosecutor and the judge.

My grandparents’ only option (apart from forfeiting the property to Israel) was to sell it to Palestinians who could live in it. But, they were told, they could not do even that unless they met a simple condition:

The house must be owned by a divorced woman with a bedridden mother.

Easy enough, right? Well, believe it or not, Sido had already written the house under my grandmother’s name. Why? Because (a) he loved her and (b) he realized that, should he suddenly pass away, he’d like to spare her a nomadic or dependent lifestyle — talk about thoughtfulness and foresight.

Also (ironically) in their favor was the fact that my grandmother’s mother was bedridden. Working against them, however, was her quickly deteriorating health.

All that remained, then, was the divorce. So off my grandfather went to the local sheikh.

When Sido told the man, “I want to divorce my wife,” the kind sheikh began a long spiel about the disadvantages of divorce, the virtues of patience and forgiveness, and the rewards of marital harmony. “Listen, listen,” my grandfather interrupted, “I love my wife. We just need to do this for them. On paper.” Suddenly, divorces were golden. The sheikh was game. The paper was drafted, rumors spread, relatives were alarmed and, with that, the (ridiculous) conditions for home-selling were fortuitously met.

But the story doesn’t end there.

The house could now be sold. But the question was: would it be sold? A potential client, my grandfather and the broker convened to set a price. My grandmother sat in an adjoining alcove, behind a curtain. (Though she did not veil, this was customary.) The men had agreed on a price when my grandmother Tata demanded a higher one. The broker brushed her off. But Sido insisted that they hear her through. The broker was outraged. He feared that the sale would yitfashkal (be spoiled) and with it his share. “This is a matter between men! Leave the women out of this! Are you going to let a woman tell you what to do? If you listen to her, then you are half a man!”

“If I am half a man,” my grandfather shot back, “then you are no man at all. Listen to her or there’s no deal. It’s her house. Not mine.” (Get him, Sido!)

Tata insisted on her price. Luckily, the future homeowner was a gentleman. He graciously met the price kirmal issit (for the lady’s sake), and the broker ate his pride — along with the bigger slice of pie that came with a successful transaction. Only fifteen days later, my grandmother’s bedridden mother passed away.

***

aA Sido and Tata were affectionately married for some 50 years. Now both of them have passed. I pray that their happily-ever-after on this earth be but a prequel for the life they’ll share in a better world than this. Ameen.